Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me, Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour’d it forth, Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men, Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

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To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

On the first day of the tenth month they took her voice. There was a clock in every room of the mansion and not a single one showed the correct time. Still, a bell rang for meals so nothing was lost. The food was good. There was always a fresh-sliced tomato and cheese. The meat was already cut into bite-sized pieces. They were not very trusting when it came to knives. She considered the damage she could do with a fork, but in the end her eyes were too important. Every animal she saw in the meadow or at the edge of the forest was damaged in some way: a dragging limb, twisted horns, two heads. She used to call to them, but that was no longer possible. Now she carried a small three-legged stool everywhere she went. When she sat on it, she pulled handfuls of birdseed and cracked corn from her pockets and spread them in a circle around her. Some were lost in the grass and sprouted overnight. There were sunflowers everywhere she went. Most, though, were eaten by the pheasants and quail and wild turkeys, all of them silent no matter the time.

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“Damage” (c) 2012 by Lisa J. Cihlar, all rights reserved. Used by permission. This poem appears in her chapbook This Is How She Fails, published May 8th 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

This is How She Fails (CC#23) — cover art by Lisa Marie Peaslee

This Is How She Fails by Lisa J. Cihlar is a cycle of more than two dozen prose poems comprising 26 pages and featuring a white and dual blue cardstock cover. It is available for $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W,. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

‘Though to my feathers in the wet, I have stood here from break of day, I have not found a thing to eat For only rubbish comes my way. Am I to live on lebeen-lone?’ Muttered the old crane of Gort. ‘For all my pains on lebeen-lone?’

King Guaire walked amid his court The palace-yard and river-side And there to three old beggars said, ‘You that have wandered far and wide Can ravel out what’s in my head. Do men who least desire get most, Or get the most who most desire?’ A beggar said: ‘They get the most Whom man or devil cannot tire, And what could make their muscles taut Unless desire had made them so?’ But Guaire laughed with secret thought, ‘If that be true as it seems true, One of you three is a rich man, For he shall have a thousand pounds Who is first asleep, if but he can Sleep before the third noon sounds.’ And thereon, merry as a bird, With his old thoughts King Guaire went From river-side and palace-yard And left them to their argument. ‘And if I win,’ one beggar said, ‘Though I am old I shall persuade A pretty girl to share my bed’; The second: ‘I shall learn a trade’; The third: ‘I’ll hurry to the course Among the other gentlemen, And lay it all upon a horse ‘; The second: ‘I have thought again: A farmer has more dignity.’ One to another sighed and cried: The exorbitant dreams of beggary, That idleness had borne to pride, Sang through their teeth from noon to noon; And when the second twilight brought The frenzy of the beggars’ moon None closed his blood-shot eyes but sought To keep his fellows from their sleep; All shouted till their anger grew And they were whirling in a heap.

They mauled and bit the whole night through; They mauled and bit till the day shone; They mauled and bit through all that day And till another night had gone, Or if they made a moment’s stay They sat upon their heels to rail, And when old Guaire came and stood Before the three to end this tale, They were commingling lice and blood. ‘Time’s up,’ he cried, and all the three With blood-shot eyes upon him stared. ‘Time’s up,’ he cried, and all the three Fell down upon the dust and snored.

‘Maybe I shall be lucky yet, Now they are silent,’ said the crane. ‘Though to my feathers in the wet I’ve stood as I were made of stone And seen the rubbish run about, It’s certain there are trout somewhere And maybe I shall take a trout If but I do not seem to care.’

The Base of All Metaphysicsby Walt Whitmanfrom “Calamus” in Leaves of Grass, 1871

And now gentlemen,A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,As base and finalè too for all metaphysics.

(So to the students the old professor,At the close of his crowded course.)

Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having studied long,I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,Of city for city and land for land.

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To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

Standing on the shore, the big lake threw everything at her. Everything it had—sand, broken reeds, alewife bones, and scales. She settled her spine flat on the dune, head tilted to the left, always to the left. Listened to the shush of grain on grain, the rattle of beach pea pods, the screee of seagulls near and far. Covered with a fine particle blanket she wore away. She lost her name. She became a hillock. The black lab bounding down the surf with a red ball in his mouth was called away when he sniffed her. This was the place she dreamed. This was the place she joined the wind and flew apart.

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“The Wind Lass” (c) 2012 by Lisa J. Cihlar, all rights reserved. Used by permission. This poem appears in her chapbook This Is How She Fails, published May 8th 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

This is How She Fails (CC#23) — cover art by Lisa Marie Peaslee

This Is How She Fails by Lisa J. Cihlar is a cycle of more than two dozen prose poems comprising 26 pages and featuring a white and dual blue cardstock cover. It is available for $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearancesby Walt Whitmanfrom “Calamus” in Leaves of Grass, 1867

Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known, (How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me! How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,) May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d by my lovers, my dear friends, When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

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To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

as a child, i was always drawn by death.
i thought it was a fifth-grade project
but i started it so early. early
i slammed out the shack door,
trotting barefoot on night-cooled dust
through sage, mountain flowers, purpleweed,
combing the borders of the government land
looking for death. sometimes i found it:
horse skulls,
eyesockets,
jackrabbit bones,
field mice under a juniper,
lizard skins drying on the hot red rocks.

Chansonette Buck spent her childhood “on the road” as stepdaughter of a Black Mountain poet, living all over the American West, in England, and in Spain. She holds the PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she concentrated on 20th-century poetry and poetics and wrote a dissertation on childhood trauma as the source of William Carlos Williams’s poetic obsessions. She has a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art, and has won awards for her visual art, her poetry, and her teaching. Chapters of her memoir Unnecessary Turns: Growing Up Beat have appeared in Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horses in Their Lives (Seal Press, May 2010) and Polarity eMagazine (Fall 2010). Her poems have appeared online and in print, including a feature in the journal tinfoildresses 2012. Her first chapbook, blood oranges (NightBallet Press, 2011), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Berkeley with her family, her boa constrictor, and way too many cats and dogs.